Buenos Aires, March 17 (NA) – The Senate will hold a session this Wednesday at 14:00 to accelerate the processing of the nominations for Carlos Mahiques—father of the Minister of Justice, Juan Bautista Mahiques—and for the former Neuquén senator Lucila Crexell as ambassador to Canada. This nomination had circulated when the former legislator voted in favor of the Bases Law in June 2024. This will be the first session of the Senate's ordinary period, where they will seek to grant parliamentary admission to the nominations so that they can then be processed by the Agreements Committee, which must issue the respective opinion. The La Libertad Avanza faction and dialogist blocs agreed last week to hold the session during a Parliamentary Labor meeting led by the provisional president of the Senate, Bartolomé Abdala, as Vice President Victoria Villarruel was in charge of the Executive Branch due to Javier Milei's trip to New York. The main objective of the ruling party is to grant parliamentary admission to the nominations of Carlos Mahiques, Lucila Crexell, six military officers, and any others that are submitted by that date, according to Noticias Argentinas agency from legislative sources. Lucila Crexell, the former legislator had been caught in the eye of the storm when it emerged that, in exchange for voting in favor of the Bases Law, the government was going to propose her as ambassador to UNESCO, although it later delayed that decision due to the controversy that arose at the time. Now, the nomination to be ambassador to Canada will take parliamentary status this Wednesday and will then be analyzed by the Agreements Committee prior to its treatment in the session chamber. The file sent to the Senate proposes the former senator as ambassador plenipotentiary, although it is known that the destination will be Canada, and it bears the signatures of President Javier Milei and Foreign Minister Pablo Quirós. Carlos Mahiques is a member of the Federal Chamber of Cassation and will turn 75 on November 1, the age at which he should retire according to the National Constitution. But the ruling party is promoting that he can stay for another five years. The federal judge Carlos Mahiques, father of the Minister of Justice, Juan Mahiques. On his personal page, the judge highlights that he has “more than five decades of experience in criminal jurisdiction, public security, and comparative criminal policy” and that he is “a specialist in organized crime and international terrorism, has led cases of high transcendence” such as the AMIA case, since in 2024 he issued a ruling on the terrorist attack that caused 85 deaths. This is not the first time a government has sought to prevent a judge from retiring at 75: former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had already tried it when she proposed that Ana María Figueroa continue in her position, but the Supreme Court prevented it and forced her to retire, as the file never reached the debate stage. Now, after obtaining parliamentary admission, the Mahiques file must be treated in the Senate's Agreements Committee, which is chaired by the Riojan Juan Carlos Pagotto, who must convene a public hearing for the magistrate to appear before the senators. In addition, two international conventions signed with France and Austria, and another one signed with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2009, will be debated in that session.
